


Hi Honey

by DreamersEclipse



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Graphic Language, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Loss, Love Confessions, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Sanctuary, The Institute - Freeform, The Railroad, somewhat angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 12:11:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13317828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamersEclipse/pseuds/DreamersEclipse
Summary: When he first heard the tape recording, he thought it was some pre-war radio show, maybe. Like the stories playing on the Silver Shroud radio out of Goodneighbor, full of adventures and mystery and good old justice. Old because justice these days is another word for revenge, blood and bullets (and mutilation. Lots of mutilation.)





	Hi Honey

“Hi Honey”

 

There’s the familiar click sound followed by the scratchy sputter of feedback. “Oops. Ha ha ha. No, no. Little fingers away. There we go!” The woman’s voice spills out of the pip boy while green light bathes Charmer’s face. His eyes glisten and take on the hue of radiation clouds with just as much a storm brewing up behind them. Then there’s the smile- broken like everything else in the wasteland. Deacon really wishes he had come out of the cryo pod untouched, a perfectly crystalized remnant of a time not made of rads and rubble. Something clean of the rust and wear of the world he now lived in. Hearing him play that tape for the hundredth time in their travels was evidence that not even 200 years of cryo sleep could wake them up from this nightmare. 

Deacon keeps up the pretense of being asleep. The attention isn’t on him regardless. It never is, especially since Charmer only plays it at night, when he thinks everyone around has gone to sleep. Throughout the day it stays safely tucked away in his rucksack – not that Deacon snooped around in there at all. That would be just plain rude. Though what does that man carry around so much wonderglue and duct tape for?

By now he knows the tape word for word. By now he knows Charmer puts it away after one listen, sniffles and then lays down on his cot or bed to halfheartedly play a game or two of Atomic Command.

He hates the sound of those missiles more than the woman’s voice.

……………….

A baby laughs and so does the woman. Deacon doesn’t think that sort of happiness exists anymore. When he first heard it, he thought it was some pre-war radio show, maybe. Like the stories playing on the Silver Shroud radio out of Goodneighbor, full of adventures and mystery and good ol’ justice. Old because justice these days is another word for revenge, blood and bullets (and mutilation. Lots of mutilation.) 

But Charmer just laughed and choked on a sob before Deacon could make some smartass comment. So he shut himself up and didn’t turn around to face his fellow agent like he had planned to. Come to think of it, that time was very reminiscent of now. He was even facing the other wall of the rundown shack they had holed up in. It was getting real hard to keep seeing that same expression on Charmer’s face.

“Hi honey! Listen…”

He had been listening. For three months now. Maybe he wasn’t the poster boy for coping, but that sorta thing wasn’t good for the mind or soul, was it? It couldn’t be. Hell it made him depressed and he couldn’t even put faces or anything to the voices he heard every night. 

With an uncharacteristic surge of emotion, he acted as though he were being roused from sleep, turning over to his back and speaking in a raspy voice as he said, “Boss?”

The tape clicked off immediately. Green light still painted his face and Deacon couldn’t help acknowledging the things such an image did to his heart. Charmer was handsome in a very macabre sense during these nights, tiredly hunched over one knee pulled up to his chest- bullet casings littering the floor next to the stained yellow mattress he lay on. His skin looked sickly under the pip boy’s light but his eyes were like burning emeralds. It cast shadows across his stubbled face and turned his light brown hair into ebony. An ethereal being infected by the sickness of the wastes.

“It’s nothing, go back to sleep.” He said softly before laying down and rolling on to his side, taking the green light with him back into the darkness.

Deacon stared at his tense back and didn’t know whether he felt like crap or unreasonably justified crap. Either way it was a shitty feeling. But his tongue was just a nest for lies and Charmer was lightly snoring before something even half decent to say crossed his mind. He sighed and stared up at the ceiling. It was a much louder silence than even real missiles crashing would have been.

\------------

“I don’t think Shaun and I need to tell you how great a father you are…but we’re going to anyway.”

This wasn’t part of the normal routine so right away Deacon knew something was up. Of course, he’d had that same uneasy feeling since Charmer had first showed up back at HQ after two long weeks of radio silence. The look in his eyes was that of a man who’d been kicked in the gut one too many times by the world. It was like looking in a mirror and it made Deacon all sorts of uncomfortable. 

‘I just wanted to say…thanks. For all you’ve done for me, always having my back.’ Charmer had told him before snatching a MILA device from Tinker Tom and leaving the Church with a sense of finality that turned his mouth to cotton. Facing down Deathclaws couldn’t compare to the burgeoning fear that crawled into his bones. He slipped into routine like a second skin and followed Charmer all throughout the wasteland, once more as a shadow. 

“Really, Charmer, old pal, you couldn’t pick a nice Raider’s den or super mutant base to mope in?” He complained aloud to himself, barely keeping the shaking in his bones under control as he walked out on to the rooftop of the Commonwealth Bank. 

The height was doing weird things to the sound of Charmer’s tape. It echoed out across the desolate wasteland, bouncing back into one’s ears like ghosts that wouldn’t die. That otherwise benign giggling sounded much more ominous as it bounced off of rubble and the daylight did no favors for Charmer’s tense shoulders and blood splattered clothes.

The height was also turning his legs to jelly and seeing his Railroad pal sitting on a flimsy plank hanging off of the side of the building just about had him dying of second hand fright. He edged slowly, carefully, quietly closer to his friend and saw the MILA placed right in front of him on the extra space of plywood. So good, he wasn’t just hanging off of that thing, that was good. Still his ass had way too little solid, crumbly building under it for anyone’s comfort really.

As the tape clicked off, Deacon slid into Charmer’s peripheral while trying to remain as far away from the edge of the building as possible. “Hey buddy!” He said with faux cheeriness. “Good job with that MILA, Tom’s paranoia is going to be fed and soothed for sure. What’s say you scoot away from the lethal piece of wood you’re on, hm?”

Charmer didn’t even glance up from the Pip boy. His thumb lightly traced over the controls without moving them. It was like he was debating whether to play the tape again or not, but god did Deacon wish that he just wouldn’t. Not out in the daylight like this. Not without his face haloed in green against the encroaching darkness. Not without the sound of those fucking missiles following the static hiss and click of finality sealing away each day survived in the Commonwealth. There was that little broken smile on his face- the only indicator that he had even been seen or heard.

“Sometimes I let myself forget that you’re a spy.”

“Yeah, well…”

Charmer’s sudden gaze searing into him threw a wrench into his motor mouth. He felt naked under those intense silver eyes. Not clothes-less naked, because that he could handle but sunglasses naked where he was laid bare under another being’s eyes and had nowhere to run or hide from them. 

That broken smile turned wry and self-deprecating. “So the glib impervious spy does have a weakness. Huh. Never would’ve pegged you for the acrophobia type.”

Deacon’s stomach turned but that must have mostly been because he glanced over the edge of the building and saw how far up they were. Being the subject of such sharp observation was a novel experience, all Vuja De, and actually pretty unpleasant. “I never would’ve pegged you for the suicidal type.”

Charmer looked slightly surprised but it was the guilty expression that really drove the nails in. “Should’ve seen me before the war.” He said cheerily, glancing back out at the wastes. “The nuclear one, of course. After my time in the service, I was…well wreck is an understatement.” The pause was bordering on too long. Deacon fidgeted and opened his mouth to make platitudes and suggestions of getting away from the edge, but the other man beat him to words.

“Three times waking up in the ER and I was just lying there thinking,” A heartbreaking laugh sounded from him, “how terrible do you have to be to fuck up even killing yourself?”

A lump formed in the spy’s throat and the swell of unpleasant emotions hit him like a tidal wave. He would’ve stumbled back if it weren’t for his legs being cemented to their spot. Familiarity of a particularly dark demon climbed his skeleton like ivy vines long thought taken control of- they squeezed in all the chinks of his armor and that’s how he knew he let this man way too far, way too close.

Charmer popped open the Pip boy, the sound clicking reality sharply back into focus. He pulled the orange holotape out and merely stroked its surface as though it were the most precious artifact in existence. “My wife, Nora…she made me believe in myself again. She was…so much stronger than me. The demons didn’t go away on their own but she made me believe that I could fight them. She made me believe that the battle for my own happiness and wellbeing was one worth fighting and not only could I win it, but she’d always be there on the days I felt like only failure rested on my shoulders.”

He took a deep, shuddering breath. Tears stung the back of his eyes and tinged his words in quivering melancholy. “So, when I say that her death killed something in me, I mean that I would have jumped from this building a long time ago.”

Deacon swallowed hard. His dirty nails dug crescents into his palms and his pale knuckles shook with the strain of his harsh grip. Here he was, listening and that’s all he could do.

“But the thought of Shaun kept me going.” Continued Charmer after an impossible stretch of silence, with just the woosh of the afternoon wind whistling past them. “My baby boy.”

This time there was a choked sob bookending his words and the spy flinched and panicked as his friend stood up on the plank itself, rocking slightly before most of his weight was held on the back foot gracing the edge of the actual building. His heart was in his throat while simultaneously fighting to burst out of his chest and he couldn’t help but take a step forward to intervene. 

Charmer held up a hand to stop him though, simply staring down at the specks of rubble pavement and rusted cars on the ground far below. 

“Boss!” He squeaked out, voice ringing an octave too high. “I am totally all ears for your sad origin story, buddy, cross my heart but we should really move this heart to heart somewhere less dangerous; y’know, where the threat of becoming pavement paint isn’t imminent. We could find a nice patio and some Nuka cola’s and have it out, what do ya say? That sounds good doesn’t it? Wouldn’t want you becoming some super mutant’s nice serving of apple sauce…”

The other man chuckled, which was not at all reassuring. “You sound so honest right now. I once said that knowing was better than not, but certainty is its own evil, don’t you think? Who knew having all the answers could leave you feeling so empty inside.”

“Haha, yeah, that’s some serious Descartes shit right there. We should go talk about it. On the ground. Away from ledges.”

“Oh good, there it is.” Charmer snipped back without any real bite. “Hey, you were listening in on my report to Dez weren’t you? Why am I even asking? Of course you were. Good, so as someone who loves knowing all the juicy details, do you want to hear some crazy secrets about the Institute?”

Deacon remained quiet, lips thinly pressed together. 

“That’s okay. I’ll tell you anyway.” Charmer flipped the holotape in his hands. His tone was light but the words were anything but. Something in the man was shattering and Deacon was ready to lunge for him if things went south- literally. “My son Shaun, who I’ve been searching seven months for, turns out he’s the leader of the Institute. Has been for about forty years, because as it turns out I was asleep for another sixty years after he was taken. The ten-year-old boy I saw is nothing but a synth creation, because why the fuck not? From my awakening in the vault to having my molecules rearranged into the Institute, it’s all been manipulated by my son. And the real kicker, the big fucking kicker is that I get to lie to him and be his blood with the sole intention of taking down his home. How’s that for Shakespearian tragic comedy?”

The other man shook. Shook like earthquakes demolished every inch of his stability, and volcanoes erupted to obliterate every miniscule piece of hope straining for life until only ashen silhouettes littered the remnants of his will. Forget the bullshit mirror analogy, Deacon saw kin, a good man, a close friend standing on the edge like he was one step away from some permanent absolution. 

He tried not to think at all as he stepped one step after another to come up behind Charmer. The other man finally looked at him once more, worry blooming across his handsome face.

“Deek, stop, you’re going to lock up and hurt yourself, or worse!” Charmer couldn’t move forward or backwards. He could only watch over his shoulder as the other man resolutely inched closer with a grim mouth and sunlight glinting off of his dark shades.

“Says the idiot who thought standing on that death trap in the first place was a good idea.” Arms gently wrapped around Charmer’s midsection and he was soon being squeezed for dear life with the slighter spy’s chest pressed to the agent’s back, and face buried into the middle of his shoulder blades so that he couldn’t focus on the fact that the ledge hung out a foot or two away. Like this, Charmer could feel Deacon shaking and guilt simply rushed through the flood gates. 

“Oh god, you fool.” The brunette shivered slightly in fear, his voice shaking. 

“Again. Says the idiot who first came out here.” The spy squeezed harder.

Charmer placed his hands gently over Deacon’s. In a soft voice he said, “I wasn’t going to jump.”

“Oh yeah, sure, totally believe you mhmm. Not at all convinced by your breakdown speech at all. Poor acting job there, pal. Can’t fool this liar. Although, here I had this whole consolatory speech prepared about what a hero you are to me and the rest of the Commonwealth, and how you’ve literally saved hundreds of lives- which means something you selfish asshole. Oh and I had this really good part about how you’re your own person and all that good stuff about free will. And the emotional cherry on top would be me telling you how fucking devastated I would personally be if you switched planes of existence so suddenly. Y’know, professing my undying love after the fact, now there’s your tragedy.”

The other man sucked in a sharp breath, his head bent while his free hand squeezed Deacon’s arm. A warm splash on the spy’s skin spoke loudly- a missile crash against his arm.

“You have horrible timing, you unclassy bastard.” Charmer laughed with a sob.

“I know.” He admitted. “And now I’m going to very carefully pull you back because I am starting to lock up and I don’t want to become paste.”

They backed away from the plank at a snail’s pace but once Deacon had enough space and footing, he simply threw himself back and brought Charmer with him. They both fell to the ground in a lump of limbs and bony elbows that were none too comfortable. Inevitably, they just rolled on their backs and stared up at the sky together while they got their breathing under control. 

“I hate you.” Deacon muttered.

“What happened to that undying love confession?” Grumbled Charmer.

They both turned their heads and stared at each other. Suddenly, out of nowhere, they cracked up laughing and couldn’t seem to stop. Their laughter echoed off of the rubble, bounced off of the decrepit buildings and sunk into all the desperate niches that were too empty and needed filling. In Charmer’s sweaty hand, he squeezed the holotape.

\----------

“I know our best days are yet to come. There will be changes, sure. Things we’ll need to adjust to…’

Deacon had thought that after the incident on the roof, the holotape would take a nice retirement to the storage in Sanctuary where most other junk and artifacts were stored. Maybe it would go in Charmer’s nice safe in his old pre-war house where he put all his other valuable possessions- like that thank you tape from H2-22. 

He should really tell Charmer that the top score of his Atomic Command game was NOT a good password. He wasn’t keen on having that conversation though and now certainly wasn’t the time. There were other things he had to say. Other things that singed the roots of his core, threatening a fire. 

The click of the end of the tape made him tense but no other sound was forthcoming from the bedroom. Unlike all the other times, listening to it upset him. It flicked embers on to gasoline that had slowly seeped out while he made the trek from the Railroad Safehouse all the way to Sanctuary. A couple minutes passed and Deacon finally pushed himself off the wall to knock on the piece of wood that looked roughly like a door. It still needed to be trimmed more and hinges added. 

“Now’s not a good time.” Charmer’s voice sounded rough and used.

Deacon shifted restlessly. His voice was as light as always but the worry was phlegm caught in the back of his throat, that he couldn’t cough out. “We live in a post-apocalyptic world, pal. The only good times that exist are at the bottom of bottles.”

The other man snorted. “I hope that means you brought beer with you. Come in.”

The so-called-door was moved easily enough. Deacon set it back against the frame, letting the heavy wood hold itself up with its weight against the splintering doorway. He found his friend sitting on the bed, old paint sheet curtains drawn over a boarded-up window and the sunlight, dull against the dusty and muted room. 

Charmer’s eyes were sunken, two slivers of chrome crescents buried under the puffy pink of his eyes. His clothes and skin were clean, free of any caked-on dirt patches, grime, or blood. The vitiligo under his left eye was prominent, beautiful. The other patch of lighter skin on the right side of his jaw was too hidden by his usual stubble overgrown into a full beard. 

Deacon bared his empty hands to the other man, who just smiled ruefully at him, a squinting affection in his gaze. “Sorry boss, didn’t have the foresight to bring alcohol. I’ll be sure to scrounge up something good next time.”

“It’s fine.” Charmer said, giving a sniff and then scrubbing his face with the palms of his calloused hands. 

The spy swallowed harshly on tinges of bitterness. Not – perhaps – directed at his friend but everything else surrounding the man. And, well, yes actually, there was a little bitterness there for Charmer too. Something that scraped at the lining of his emotions like gutting a pumpkin. The memory of the little synth boy, Shuan pulling on his arm and asking him if his dad hates him because he isn’t real. 

His teeth gritted, fists clenched at his side as he stood still and cold next to the dresser. Charmer picked up on his silence. That unnerving, unnatural thing like an omen. The other man turned on the bed to face him.

“You don’t have the right to say it.” Charmer said, not wasting a breath or word. Like always.

“With all due respect, Boss man, fuck that.” He said it so quietly and calmly that he didn’t recognize himself. It was a character. It was scripted words on the string of his voice. Something deep inside of him meant it. Something etched by habitual repetition in his bones spoke it to him like all the ripples and waves of the ocean ceasing.

Charmer looked away from him. A quick snap of the head. A clenched fist threatening bone to tear open knuckle. “You don’t know shit about it.” He said in an even quieter, more lightning in a bottle tone. 

“Oh well, obviously. Please enlighten me as to what you’ve been doing this past year because I’m a tad bit confused right now. Say it to my face, Wes. That you never considered them people. That you’ve just been bullshitting this entire time.”

Charmer shot up from the, whipping around to aim an accusatory finger and shoot careless, angry words from his mouth. “Fuck you, Deacon. I’ve done nothing but give my whole soul to the Railroad. I’ve killed so many of your enemies for you. I’ve bled and lost for the Railroad. I’ve lied and hurt for the Railroad….I killed my own son for you.”

Silence stretched. His eyes were piercing and constant on Deacon’s. A silver suture that stung, that tore open instead of stitching back together. He couldn’t help but look away for a moment and he was ashamed of himself for it. You should never give an inch as a spy. Not a centimeter of a smile or a squint of the eyes. It should be measured out like rations for those right moments you need to survive. 

Deacon felt the breath harbored in his lungs like an anchor at port. “So why would you want to hurt your son again?” Charmer looked down, his whole chest shaking and biting down harshly on his bottom lip. The spy took a step forward to him but his friend just backed up like a cornered animal. He gave a long exhale, frustrated but remorseful. “I know what you’ve given up, I know, okay? I’m not telling you that your pain isn’t valid or unjustified. Or that this situation isn’t fucked up because it is. But there’s a little boy who is also a victim in all of this. He didn’t ask to be created, he doesn’t deserve to be persecuted for what the Institute has done. You lost your son to the Institute long ago but can you look this Shaun in the eyes and tell him that he doesn’t have a father? That he doesn’t have a family? After everything you…After everything we, the Railroad has done to his home?”  
“Stop. Stop, just stop.” He sat down on the bed, turned away from Deacon, burying his head into his hands. He choked on a sob. “Just stop please.”

Deacon took a moment and then sat on the twin sized bed next to him, a comfortable but still close distance away. He thought about reaching over, offering a comforting touch but he felt so suddenly overwhelmed by the fear of making the wrong move. Of causing pain where all he wants is to help. Help Wes and help the young synth boy Shaun.

A long moment passed. Feelings swirled about, rampant and indiscernible between the both of them. It was full of something that he couldn’t pick apart like an easy target knee deep in radiation and trauma. He only knew for certain what he felt, the bubbling emotions of earnest caring and regrettable tripping into deeper and deeper feelings. It rested within him, uneasy but settled. Undeniable in the face of the man that he loved. He was lost, so so lost but at least it wasn’t like being lost in the waste land. Wandering forever, cold and lonely, and dying of a million different things.

“Wes,” he began, his hands awkward fists in his lap. A hand fell gently on his knee and drew his gaze back up to the other man’s face. There was a soft expression there, unexpected, and eyes watery with hurt but the smile was much too contrary – all gentle curl of the lips and affection nocked on his cupid’s bow.

Charmer didn’t say anything, but he moved to throw one leg over his hips and push Deacon flat on to the bed. He went willingly if not confused and panicking a little inside. Wondering if this was manipulation or sincerity. “B-Boss?”

He leaned in and the panic grew, his heart was a heavy spasm but the other man on top of him didn’t kiss him or anything. Charmer just tucked his head into the nook between Deacon’s neck and shoulder, breathed heavily and warm on his skin and rested there. A comforting weight on top of him. 

“Just…” A shuddering exhale that sounded close to tears was a warm fire on his neck. “Don’t mention him. Please. Don’t.”

Deacon hesitantly wrapped his arms around the other man who sagged fully into him once the gesture was initiated. He squeezed harder then and refused to let go, doubted his arms could unlock now with the physical presence too warm, too real, too present to let flee his cold, empty hands.

Maybe he didn’t deserve to hold his friend. Not when he knew the truth that had to be spoken, more sharp and painful than any lie he could make up.

“Shaun is your son. You know he is, Wes.” Charmer shook with restraint, unformed sobs choking on each quick little breath. Instead of pushing away, he leaned himself impossibly more into the spy. Deacon stroked his brown hair, the tangled strands softly pulling apart at the ministration of his fingers. 

“He didn’t ask to be created by the Institute. He’s like any of the countless others that we saved from that place. Doesn’t he deserve a home? Doesn’t he deserve a family?”

The sobs weren’t able to be held back this time. They broke through like a desperate torrent. Tears stained Deacon’s white t-shirt, but he just held on tighter and didn’t let go. Not even when the sobs had subsided into light hiccups and deep breaths. 

Charmer laid his head on Deacon’s chest, and stared up at him. Something flashed in his eyes and he was suddenly laughing with those strained vocal chords of his. “Fucking- Goddamit, Deacon.”

“What? I want in on the joke! What the hell are you laughing about?”

The giggles were flowing and infectious. He found himself laughing along, until…they petered off at the same time. Charmer touched his sunglasses and he lightly held on to the other man’s wrist. Feathery. Expectant. 

Deacon felt a rush of sincerity that he thought long dead, along with all the green in the world. But nature always finds a way doesn’t it? “Don’t push him away.” 

Charmer nodded, a determination alight within his eyes that had been flickering on a dying wick for much too long. Shame turned his gaze away and reconciliation brought it back around. “I knew, deep down, I knew that I couldn’t say no to him. I just…wanted that peace y’know, that lack of control and responsibility that I always carry on my shoulders like the festering wound of the world.”

“You’re not a hunchback, Boss. You’re much too handsome for that.”

The other man’s face fell…no, slipped. Like a curtain levied down over the stage for an intermission- that place in-between. It was serious grey eyes burning with a wry smile that knew too much. Bushy eyebrows thoughtfully furled together, and that beautiful vitiligo tempted the spy to caress it; or rather temptation turned into lack of control apparently as Deacon gently ran the back of his fingers from his free hand over the lighter patch of skin. It was too smooth, too good for this world of ashen cracks and corpses. Too much light in those eyes, that smile, it was like only being able to look at the sun with his sunglasses but he wondered how long it had been since he saw the sun with his own two eyes. 

Charmer gently removed his caught hand and cupped Deacon’s jaw with it. His thumb touched the spies lips – everything soft, too soft – caressing the chapped skin like some valuable token. It made the oxygen catch in his throat, his heart beating to a slow crescendo. Charmer drawing his lips closer and closer to Deacon’s until the soft press drowned out all sound, mute fireworks going off between them. 

Deacon felt too much. His chest felt like it was being crushed under his own emotions. He couldn’t stand it, didn’t deserve it but he wanted every second to linger. He pushed Charmer off of him, breathless even though they hadn’t been kissing for even a minute.

Taking ahold of Charmer’s hand he brought it up slowly, pliant fingers dragging up his cheek and kept his hand loosely there to grab the side of his sunglasses. There was a searching expression on the vault dweller’s face. It bled affection. Charmer pushed the glasses up like he was diffusing a bomb, made Deacon’s heart soar and stampede. He couldn’t handle it. He squeezed his eyes shut as the black plastic was gently pulled away from his face altogether.

The air touched his face in a new way. Charmer’s breath was warm against his eyelids, a soft press of lips against them that nearly shattered Deacon right then and there. It made him open his eyes if not a little hesitantly and there it was. Wes smiling at him like a dopey fool. 

Staring at the sun. He could go blind for this.

 

\-----------

 

“But everything we do, no matter how hard…we do it for our family. Now say goodbye, Shaun…Bye bye? Say bye bye?’

Deacon knocked gently on the door frame. Shaun glanced up from the pip boy in his hands. The bed he was sitting on was rickety and not the freshest, but it was his. There was a shelf with weathered, broken toys on them and even a rope-less basketball hoop above his rusty steel framed bed.

Charmer promised they’d get all the holes in the wall boarded up soon, along with a door of his very own which is almost tragically a luxury. 

“You doing alright, Sport?”

Shaun nodded. He looked lost in thought and Deacon wondered how a synth boy who barely knew his father could bare such striking resemblance with that expression. “Do you think my mom would’ve loved me, Deacon? Even though I’m not…”

The spy rubbed the back of his neck, having not been prepared for such a question. He felt the lies, easy like milk and sugar on his tongue. Sometimes people need a sugar coat to keep them from dying in all that cold of the world. He recalled what his friend had told him on that roof a couple months ago about his wife. Someone that loved all the monsters in dark places within him. A woman who died protecting her child.

“Yeah.” He said softly, sincerely, “Yeah, Shaun. She would’ve loved you and then some. C’mon, your dad is waiting on us.” 

Shaun hopped off the bed with a loud creak. He handed the pip boy to Deacon and the spy ruffled the young boy’s hair before taking one of his small hands into his own. They made their way out together to the northern most part of Sanctuary where many of the settlers were. There were mounds and mounds of unsettled earth lined neatly next to each other. Some make shift wagons and the Brahmin still lingered off to edge and there was Preston sticking a shovel into one mound to take a breather and wipe the sweat from his brow. Several of the other settlers were placing large rocks on the mounds. Mama Murphy sat in the shade of a desolate house, watching everyone bustle about.

They passed by the Longs who were tending to a couple of the graves.

“Do you think it’s going to be really green here then one day? Y’know because all of the bodies?” Jun asked Marcy who just scoffed before smacking him upside of the head. “Hey!”

“Don’t be insensitive you dunce.”

They passed by a ghoul in an old worn tux who was visiting from another settlement. He had a charred and cracked book in his fleshy hands that he was skimming through. Shaun pointed at the odd white collar and Deacon told him not to be rude.

Charmer was talking to Sturges. When the two got closer to him they could make out that the conversation was about grave markers and how else they could put names to graves without digging into their limited supply of wood.

“Looks like we’ll talk about this later, friend.” Sturges said with a telling look over the other man’s shoulder. Charmer turned around and saw the two of them. He looked sad for a moment, just a moment before a wry smile came over his face. He gave the mechanic a friendly pat on the shoulder then walked that short distance over to them.

His gaze settled on Deacon for a long moment of gratitude then down to Shaun who then kneeled to be eye level with.

“Thanks for being here, Shaun. I really appreciate it and I know your mom would too.”

The boy looked out at the newly made cemetery. “Did you know all of these people?”

“Some of them. I didn’t know most of them well but they deserve a proper burial.”

“Hey Chief, we’re going to begin the ceremony soon.” Madeline, the new settler in charge of trade called out. 

Charmer stood up again and reached his hand out to Shaun. “Ready to say goodbye to mom?”

Shaun nodded and took his dad’s hand, his other still enveloped in Deacon’s and the three of them made their way over to the single grave with a cross on it.

“Goodbye mom.” Shaun whispered to himself as the ghoul began talking.

**Author's Note:**

> Woo boy it's been so long since I've published anything and I've had this story on my back burner for over a year. But I'm happy I finished it and I can finally share it. Hope you enjoy.


End file.
